Chris does Canterbury

This definitely felt like a fun town to explore

The main reason for the stopover in England is that for Chris’ 40th birthday, he really wanted to see the tomb of the Black Prince.  If that isn’t your first choice of birthday destination, I can’t imagine why not ;-P.   Lol anyways, it’s a historic figure from the time period C is super interested in who died young, before he had the chance to ruin his reputation.  

Canterbury Cathedral

He is resting permanently at Canterbury Cathedral, and while churches aren’t my thing, English is and, well, Canterbury Tales ;). So I was just as happy to tag along as well.

Randomness inside the Cathedral - was actually really interesting to explore

The first challenge was getting there.  Not an insane challenge given public transit availability, but we didn’t realize the tap on / tap off part only works in London proper.   So when they came to check tickets on the train we tried to tap and that definitely didn’t work.    Fortunately the fare checker is clearly used to tourists and was super kind and polite - no snarkiness or fines or anything for what was legitimately an honest mistake.  Just sold us the round trip tickets so we don’t even have to figure it out to come back.

Chaucer Statue

Train ride itself quickly took us from city-London to farmland that felt very much like farmland at home.  When we got to Canterbury, almost the first thing was saw was the city gates that definitely looked appropriately castle-esque ;) 

Probably wouldn't have been nearly as charming if we were an invading army ;)

I had a Let’s Roam for Canterbury (well two actually lol), one of which referenced the Black Prince’s tomb, so we started with that one and found the start - on the way there, passing a statue of Chaucer. But the Let’s Roam wasn’t great and when we got to the Cathedral we realized they weren’t being precious about going in only when your assigned time was (we had tickets that were for later) so we prioritized that and went in to explore the Cathedral.   Some parts we could take photos, others (such as the Crypt) we could not.  Very cool and almost incomprehensible to consider how much history has happened in that one spot.

Chris meets his idol

After Chris finished his visit with the prince, we toured the rest of the Cathedral (there’s a library here too!  Alas, we couldn’t go in), and then continued on our Let’s Roam (which did not get any better - was super disappointed actually).   

View from the City Jail

The old city jail is in the tower entrance, so we went and visited it - some interesting history and good view of the city from the top.  Mildly amused that they have a plaque documenting the two people who escaped - one by attaching a rope and climbing down, and one by jumping into a passing hay wagon ;).  They also, amusingly, have an escape room which we did not attempt.

The leaning house amused me; it has a bookstore inside it

We explored the town for a while - like many places, most shops and touristy stuff was in one area, but the really cool old buildings / architecture / streets / etc.  We had lunch at the Old Weavers House - like really old.  1500.  Like a couple *hundread* years older than our country.  

We had lunch at the building on the left

Then we had time to kill before our train so we went for a walk along this really lovely trail we’d found earlier until it was time to head back to the station.

The trail followed the river, and these boats were ferrying tourists along...

Such a cool little town with so much history.  I’m really glad we got to see it.

History marks the spot where Thomas Beckett was murdered

At the foot of the Black Prince.   Couldn't have been all bad ;)